The Perils of the Alexandria Library: Two Ancient Book-Burnings

During its thousand-year history, the ancient library at Alexandria saw its share of troubles.

In 47 B.C.E., Julius Caesar accidentally set fire to warehouses containing a cache of rare and ancient volumes given to him by Cleopatra and ready to be shipped to Rome. Caesar’s army had been blockaded within Alexandria’s harbor by Pompey’s military commander Archillas. Caesar sought to break the blockade by ramming unmanned, burning ships into the enemy fleet. Once they were ignited, the ships, abandoned by their crews, were blown into Alexandria’s harbor—setting the port’s facilities afire and reducing the books stored there to ashes.¹

What was the damage caused by this conflagration? By this time, the library’s holdings had grown to a million volumes. Estimates from Livy and Seneca, among others, suggest that 40,000 or 50,000 volumes were lost.

Since ancient times, the claim has been made that after Caesar’s death Mark Antony replaced many of the volumes in the library. But even if the reports are true that Antony presented Cleopatra with 200,000 volumes from the library at Pergamum,² in Anatolia, this gift could not repair the loss: Tens of thousands of books were gone forever. Some scholars speculate that some of Aristotle’s personal library—acquired for the Alexandria Library by Callimachus (see the sidebar to this article) and possibly presented to Caesar by Cleopatra—may have perished in the flames.